It's usually a big moment in the game if Andrew Miller is pitching, and April 21, 2018, was no exception. Miller was protecting a one-run Indians lead in the eighth inning, with two runners on and two men out. He had two strikes on the Orioles' Adam Jones, and tried to put him away with a fastball. "Ninety-seven," a broadcaster calmly noted. It was, according to Statcast*, Miller's fastest fastball of the year by quite a bit.

Every pitcher has a fastball. And, of course, every pitcher with a fastball has a fastest ball, the one pitch he threw harder than all the other fastballs. A flamethrower like Aroldis Chapman (average fastball last year: 98.9 mph) has a fastest ball (104.4), and just as surely a finesse pitcher like Kyle Hendricks (86.8, 90.9) does, too. On average, a major league pitcher throws his fastest fastball about 3 mph harder than he throws his average fastball. That pitch from Miller was a little more than 4 mph harder than his fastball average, a half-mile harder than his second-fastest pitch, a mile and a half faster than his third.

There are 575 pitchers who, last year, threw at least 250 pitches. We put each pitcher's fastest pitch into a spreadsheet -- 575 lines, one for each pitcher -- to try to answer some questions: What do we make of these fastest fastballs? When are they thrown, and why, and to whom, and to what effect? We will answer those questions, after giving you the chance to hypothesize with a game of multiple-choice:

1. When in counts are these fastest fastballs thrown?

A) They're thrown when the pitcher is ahead in the count, especially with two strikes. The pitcher is using his fastest fastball as a strikeout pitch, a way to get a swinging third strike while he has the luxury of being a little wild.

B) They're thrown when the pitcher is behind in the count, especially 2-0 and 3-1. He knows the batter is geared up for a fastball, he knows he has to throw a fastball, and so he throws extra hard -- power on power, a true challenge pitch.

C) They're pretty evenly distributed. There's not much intent here, and a pitcher's fastest fastball is really just his fastball, thrown in a moment when he just nails his form.

The answer is:

A, and by a lot. A fastball thrown in a two-strike count is more than five times likelier to be a pitcher's fastest pitch of the season than a fastball thrown in any other count. The most common count is 0-2; the second most is 2-2, then 1-2, then 3-2, and only then come all the other counts. A fastball thrown in an 0-2 count is 30 times more likely to be a pitcher's fastest fastball than a fastball thrown on 3-0, nearly 20 times more likely than a fastball thrown on 2-0, more than four times as likely as a fastball thrown on 0-1.

Bartolo Colon, for example, averaged just 87.4 mph with his fastball last year. But one day in Texas he had Didi Gregorius in an 0-2 count. Colon threw that fastball 93.7 mph, more than 6 mph harder than his usual. It was the biggest average-to-fastest margin by any pitcher in baseball. (Gregorius lined out hard to center field.)

Using this pitch with two strikes makes sense. (But, then, all the hypotheses made sense!) A pitcher's very, very fastest fastball is almost like a specialty pitch: He doesn't want to throw it all the time, for various reasons, but on two strikes it works to give a batter something new, late in a count, when there's a premium on swinging strikes.

2. When in innings are these pitches thrown?

A) They're thrown mostly with men on base. These are the most crucial situations, and a pitcher pulls out his very best stuff to get out of trouble.

B) They're thrown mostly early in innings, often to the first batter of an inning, when the pitcher has some strut coming out of the dugout, before he has been tired out by his time on the mound.

C) They're thrown mostly with two outs, when a pitcher has gotten into a rhythm on the mound and he really wants to put a punctuation mark on an inning.

The answer is:

C. The fastest fastball is more than three times as likely to come on a two-out fastball as a none-out fastball. (One-out fastballs are in the middle.) Put this fact and the one before it together and we get this: A fastball thrown with two outs and two strikes is our most common fastest-fastball scenario.

Chris Sale's fastest fastball is a good example: It came in June, against the Mariners, and it was his final pitch of a seven-inning start. He struck out Mike Zunino swinging with that pitch, then marched off the mound with the lean of an ace who'd just polished off a masterpiece: seven innings, no runs, four hits, and 13 strikeouts, the last one on a 100.5 mph pitch that was nearly 6 mph harder than his average fastball. (Sale had the third-biggest jump from his average fastball to his fastest fastball last year.) His second-hardest fastball of the year would have been an even better example: It came in the same game, also against Zunino. Sale had struck out the first two batters of the inning on six pitches, then jumped ahead Zunino 0-2, and with a chance at his first-ever immaculate inning -- and just the 93rd in major league history -- he missed the zone for a ball. He came back with his 10th pitch of the inning, at 100.4, to get Zunino. Same result: Stomp off the mound, etc. Sale's eight fastest pitches last year all came on two strikes; five came with two outs.

Fastest fastballs aren't thrown any more frequently with runners on base than with bases empty. As long as we're throwing out untested hypotheses -- perhaps because a pitcher is more likely to throw this pitch when he's in a groove? From the windup? When he's less worried about a wild pitch?

3. Whom are these pitches thrown to?

A) Mike Trout, the best hitter in baseball. You just have to bring a little extra against him.

B) Bryce Harper, the most, how would you say, divisive hitter in baseball. He's got a target on him.

C) Chris Davis, the most strikeout-prone batter in baseball. If these fastest fastballs truly come from pitchers hunting Ks, it could just be as simple as Davis being the busiest game in town.

D) Jose Peraza, an option so out of nowhere I couldn't possibly have come up with him unless he is the correct answer. Anyway, a harder fastball might be more likely to be a wilder one, and a straighter one, and you'd rather make a straight-and-centered mistake to Peraza than to Trout.

The answer is:

B -- Bryce Harper, by a lot, relatively speaking. Trout saw two fastest fastballs (by Kendall Graveman and Erik Goeddel). Davis saw one (Tim Hill). Peraza saw one (Chris Volstad).

Harper, meanwhile, saw 11 -- as many as those three guys and the No. 2 player on the whole danged spreadsheet, Manny Machado, combined. Joe Musgrove, Aaron Sanchez, John Gant, Brandon McCarthy, Jimmie Sherfy, Dillon Peters, Alex Wood, Seranthony Dominguez, Andrew Suarez, Arodys Vizcaino and Zac Curtis all throttled up against Harper: Nine times, Harper swung, putting just one in play (for a fly out) and striking out thrice.

There's a bunch of noise here -- these are rare events -- but one's intuition would probably expect that the top of this list would be a bunch of stars, and it does skew toward that. Harper and Machado being at the top is a powerful suggestion that the order of this list means something.

1. Bryce Harper, 11
2. Machado, 7
2. Ronald Acuna Jr., 7
4. Willson Contreras, 6
4. Jesus Aguilar, 6
6. Eight players tied with 5: Paul Goldschmidt, Francisco Lindor, Odubel Herrera, J.D. Martinez, Amed Rosario, Brian Dozier, Justin Upton, Jose Altuve

4. So, what happens?

A) These pitches are wild but effective (at getting swinging strikes and bad contact)

B) These pitches are wild and also ineffective

C) These pitches are not wild but also aren't very effective

D) These pitches are not wild and are effective

E) These pitches are actually just like all the other pitches

The answer will be somewhat open to interpretation, depending on how different something must be before you consider it different enough to mention. But here are the basics:

The average fastball across the majors is a strike 65 percent of the time, gets whiffs on 19 percent of swings, is put in play on 39 percent of swings and, when it is put in play, allows a .338 batting average and .560 slugging percentage.

The average fastest fastball, meanwhile, was a strike 63 percent of the time, got whiffs on 20 percent of swings, was put in play on 32 percent of swings and, when it was put in play, allowed a .422 batting average and .600 slugging percentage.

That's a bit of a mixed bag, complicated by the sample smallness of fastest fastballs, and complicated further by a whole bunch of other factors (like the effect of the count, and the better quality of hitters in the sample, and the fact that on this spreadsheet Jimmie Sherfy threw as many pitches (1) as Max Scherzer). But to my eye the answer is closest to E: They're mostly just like the other pitches. Slightly wilder, more likely to get a whiff, more likely to be fouled off but also more likely to be hit hard -- all of it, though, just slightly, and probably leaning against the pitcher's best interests. If we take that to be the case, then we can understand why these fastest pitches are each pitcher's outliers, rather than what they try to do all the time on every pitch: There isn't a ton of benefit to throwing at the outer bounds of one's ability, except perhaps situationally. And, of course, if they tried to throw this hard every time, they'd presumably get tired more quickly, perhaps get hurt more often. So they don't. These are just their occasional fastest.

To understand a little bit better, we went to the man who started this story: Andrew Miller. He wouldn't have recalled this as his fastest pitch of the year, but it made some sense to him that it would turn up: big situation, two strikes and two outs. It was a two-seamer -- which he feels like he throws a little bit harder, but hardly ever -- because he wanted to show a quality hitter like Jones a little wrinkle. More than all that, though, it made sense to him because, at the time, it felt like "my mechanics were falling in line. I felt like I was figuring it out. And usually I don't throw the two-seamer unless I'm really locked in."

In other words, he had to feel like he was in the right place to really reach back. He rarely throws a pitch as hard as he can. He doesn't feel like he can command it as well, he isn't sure his stuff plays as well, and he worries that really exerting himself will cause him to lose his mechanics. Throwing his very hardest tends to get him in trouble more than anything, he says. But this day he felt like he had it in him. "To me, that's just me feeling really good where I'm at. I sold out for velocity. The thought inside my head was, 'I'm going to throw one by him.' I was ready to take off."

"It obviously didn't work," he says. Jones fouled the pitch away to stay alive. On the next pitch, a slider, Miller got the strikeout.

*Nothing can measure millions of pitch velocities, in 30 different parks, with perfect precision and accuracy. We used Statcast data, and we spot-checked against Brooks Baseball's velocities (and watched many of these pitches) to make sure everything looked about right. But it's probably best to assume a few of these "Fastest" pitches might have actually been a pitcher's second, or third, or fourth fastest. Close enough to have fun with. "Average" fastball velocities, also from Statcast, included four- and two-seamers, but not cutters.

US champion who chronicled her journey as a professional athlete running through cancer has died aged 32

Thousands of tributes have been paid to Gabriele Grunewald after the US champion runner, who inspired so many with her brave fight against cancer, died at the age of just 32.

Grunewald’s strength both on and off the track saw her win a US title and race at two global championships, as well as empowering people through the Brave Like Gabe Foundation – all following her initial cancer diagnosis in 2009 and further three rounds of cancer and treatment.

“Brave Like Gabe” began as a hashtag to support Grunewald as she sought treatment for her third battle with an incurable rare salivary gland cancer in 2017 but it became so much more as she chronicled her journey.

“From the very first day I was told I had cancer in 2009, I knew running would be a big part of my journey back to health,” she wrote on the foundation’s website. “It has truly been my refuge; when everything else seems to be going wrong and the outcomes are far beyond my control, I can find perspective and hope on the run.

“Being brave, for me, means not giving up on the things that make me feel alive.”

On Tuesday, Grunewald’s husband Justin, a fellow runner and doctor, wrote on Instagram that his wife died “peacefully with no suffering”.

“At 7:52 I said “I can’t wait until I get to see you again” to my hero, my best friend, my inspiration, my wife,” he wrote. “I always felt like the Robin to your Batman and I know I will never be able to fill this gaping hole in my heart or fill the shoes you have left behind. Your family loves you dearly, as do your friends.”

On June 9, he had posted an update that Grunewald had been moved to comfort care, which prompted thousands of messages of support from around the world.

“Gabriele heard your messages and was so deeply moved,” Justin wrote. “She wants you to stay brave and keep all the hope in the world. Thanks for helping keep her brave in her time of need.”

Among those to pay tribute was world marathon record-holder Paula Radcliffe, who wrote on Twitter: “The bravery, heart and smile of @gg_runs will always shine brightly and inspire so many. Thinking of you and of @JustinGrunewald and all those whose lives were enriched by your courage and love.”

USA Track & Field wrote: “@gg_runs embodied true determination, dedication and commitment in every facet of her life. She will be remembered as one of the bravest athletes we knew. Her legacy lives on as she inspired a world of people.”

USA’s 2004 Olympic marathon bronze medallist Deena Kastor said: “Courage. Grace. Bravery. It lives on when good people teach us these winning virtues.

“The running community lost a hero in Gabe due to a rare cancer, yet her gifts live on.”

Grunewald was initially diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma after the discovery of a small tumour on her parotid gland in 2009. She ran a 1500m PB just the following day. Despite treatment, she continued to train and compete.

In a routine follow-up in 2010, doctors discovered papillary thyroid cancer and Grunewald underwent further treatment but still returned to the track. She finished fourth in the 1500m at the 2012 US Olympic trials, missing out on a place in the London Games team by one spot. A further 1500m PB followed and she won her first national title with US 3000m gold in 2014 which qualified her for the World Indoor Championships in Sopot.

In 2016 it was discovered that she needed further treatment which led to the removal of around half of her liver. After the surgery she was believed to be cancer-free but a follow-up scan in March 2017 showed small tumours. Grunewald’s last competition was the US Championships in Sacramento in June 2017.

More about her life and fight can be read in a touching account by Sports Illustrated’s Tim Layden here.

In 2017, Grunewald’s sponsor Brooks Running shared a powerful short film documenting her journey towards qualifying for the US Championships while looking for the best course of treatment to combat her rare form of cancer.

CONCORD, N.C. – A little rain and an extra 18-hour wait wasn’t enough to stop Garin Mash from picking up the first Bandolero Outlaws feature win of the summer on Tuesday afternoon at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Mash, who lined up fourth on the initial start of the 20-lap event before it was rained out Monday night, methodically worked his way through the pack and ultimately passed leader Connor Yonchuk coming to the white flag with an inside sweep in turns three and four.

From there, Mash held off a final-turn dive by Yonchuk and came back to the checkered flag in front by .355 seconds for his second career Bandolero Outlaws victory in Summer Shootout competition.

“I knew I had to hit my marks if we were going to win that one,” noted Mash. “We were trying to run him down there in lapped traffic … catch him, catch him, catch him, and we finally got him there with the white flag in sight to get the job done. I had a lot of confidence he wasn’t going to wreck us for it.”

Mash, who finished second in points to eventual champion Justin Gareis last summer at Charlotte, is gunning for a title this time around and hopes his opening act victory sends a message to the field.

“Everybody ranked me like 10th coming into this … and I don’t know if they all know or not, but I’m running for points and running for a championship this year,” said Mash. “I finished second last year in my second year of racing, so I hope this says something to some people and they fear us this time.”

Yonchuk took the point from outside polesitter Santiago Hill at halfway in the 20-lap feature and lamented washing up the track at the exit of turn two with a lap and a half remaining.

“In the last turn, when I tried diving under him, I shouldn’t have backed out,” Yonchuk admitted. “I figured he would have given me room, I just didn’t want to wreck my car, knowing that we have another race tonight. I just needed to back my corners up; we were way too free coming off the corners.

“I think I could have won the race or been pretty close, but this is a big confidence-builder, and I feel like I’ll have an even better shot tonight after learning from my mistakes in this one.”

Hill hung on to complete the podium, followed by Jadyn Daniels and Zac Fowler.

Title contender Carson Ramsey ran among the top three for the first half of the race, but dropped out with mechanical troubles after completing 13 laps and finished 16th in the 17-car field.

The finish:

Garin Mash, Connor Yonchuk, Santiago Hill, Jadyn Daniels, Zac Fowler, Parker Eatmon, Cameron Murray, Whitney Meggs, Skyler Chaney, Carter Russo, Logan Clark, Trevor Wester, Natasha Elder, Madison Miracle, Fran Pedano, Carson Ramsey, Sean Abell.

TOLEDO, Ohio – Everyone loves playing in front of the hometown crowd. It’s always a great feeling to perform in front of friends and family.

It didn’t seem like racing in front of the hometown crowd would be possible for Sam Mayer in 2019. The Franklin, Wis., native has been splitting his time between the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and the ARCA Menards Series in 2019, and the ARCA stop at nearby Madison Int’l Speedway wasn’t on his schedule.

But a schedule change in the K&N Pro Series opened up an extra weekend for Mayer and his GMS Racing team, and they decided to fill it with Friday night’s Shore Lunch 200, giving Mayer his chance to race in front of the Wisconsin faithful.

“Getting the chance to race at home is really cool,” Mayer said. “Having all my family and friends come out to watch and support me is going to be really exciting and I hope we can pull out a win for all of them.”

At just 15 years old, Mayer is following in some heady footsteps. Franklin, a suburb of Milwaukee, has been part of a hotbed of big-time stock car racers that was home to drivers like NASCAR Cup Series champion Alan Kulwicki and NASCAR Truck Series champion Ted Musgrave. Kulwicki hailed from nearby Greenfield, while Musgrave, originally from Illinois, relocated to Wisconsin just as his stock car career was taking off. Although he hadn’t been born yet when either of those two drivers were making their mark in NASCAR’s upper levels, Mayer has an appreciation for their accomplishments and he’s doing his best to follow their path to success.

“Knowing the roots of those drivers and how they started is really inspiring,” he said. “My goal is to get to the top level and be successful in that and I feel like Drivers Edge, Chevrolet and GMS can help me get there.”

Despite his age, Mayer has a record of success. He’s won feature races at places like the legendary Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina and won the K&N Pro Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier in the season. He was a part of Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s late model program in 2018 and transitioned to GMS Racing’s program in 2019. He’s still affiliated with Earnhardt through the Driver’s Edge Development program, and his ride with GMS Racing puts him with an organization that won the ARCA Menards Series title with Grant Enfinger in 2015 and the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series championship in 2016.

“Being with GMS Racing gives me the opportunity to run really, really well week in and week out,” he said. “We’ve had so much success this year and I’m really looking forward to what we have for the rest of the year.”

United States defender/midfielder Tyler Adams has withdrawn from the Gold Cup with a groin injury, U.S. Soccer announced Tuesday.

FC Dallas defender Reggie Cannon has been tabbed to take his place on the roster.

-- When is the CONCACAF Gold Cup?
-- Full Gold Cup fixtures schedule

"Following further evaluation in New York City, the 20-year-old has been diagnosed with acute on chronic groin issues that will require a minimum of 6-8 weeks recovery period," U.S. Soccer said in a statement.

The announcement is a huge blow for U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter, who is feeling some heat following two poor performances in Gold Cup tune-up losses to Jamaica and Venezuela.

Adams was expected to take on a hybrid role in Berhalter's system, playing as a right-back, but stepping into central midfield when the U.S. is in possession. Yet the RB Leipzig man missed a six-week stretch from the beginning of April until mid-May due to an adductor injury, and though he returned for a pair of games at the end of the campaign, including Leipzig's 3-0 defeat to Bayern Munich in the DFB-Pokal final, he was deemed insufficiently recovered to participate in the Gold Cup.

Adams had been scheduled to arrive at the U.S. camp on June 11. Now Berhalter will have to cope without one of his most important players.

San Jose Earthquakes defender Nick Lima has filled the right-back/central midfield role in a few friendlies, but it remains to be seen if Berhalter will stick with the system when the U.S. opens the tournament against Guyana on June 18.

Meanwhile, Cannon, 21, has made two appearances with the U.S., but none under Berhalter.

He made his international debut in a 1-1 draw with Peru last October and followed that with another start against Italy a month later. Following his professional debut in 2017, Cannon has made 56 appearances for Dallas in all competitions, scoring one goal.